Early Reading and Phonics
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” Dr. Seuss
At Acklam Whin Primary School we believe the journey to becoming life-long readers starts by immersing our youngest children in a rich and exciting world of words and stories. We understand the importance of children learning to read as quickly as possible so that they can use reading as a tool to learn and access the best of children’s literature.
Strong Beginnings
The teaching of early reading begins in Nursery where our curriculum ensures children are:
- Engaging in high quality adult-led interactions with back-and-forth conversations;
- Sharing carefully selected songs, rhymes and stories every day, including repeated reads of familiar texts;
- Taught through a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences that develop their spoken language and embed newly taught vocabulary;
- Provided with activities that develop listening and attention, including oral blending.
Reading in Reception and Year One
In Reception and Year One, children continue to be immersed in engaging and interactive shared reading sessions through Ruth Miskin’s ‘Talk Through Stories’. Our Talk through Stories approach helps to build children’s oracy whilst simultaneously developing children’s language, vocabulary comprehension skills and fostering a love for reading.
In Story time sessions, we help children to get to know the text really well. We spend time exploring the plot, the characters, their actions and motives. We learn familiar and favourite phrases whilst joining in with retelling the story. We revisit and retell parts of / the whole story every day.
During Vocabulary time, we explore words from the story. These words have been specifically selected as ‘Tier Two’ words. These are words that the children are unlikely to hear in everyday conversation but are likely to come across in stories. These words are not only explored in the context of the story but also in the context of the children’s everyday lives. We revisit and recap the vocabulary learnt every day and display it in our classroom for adults to model.
First Rate Phonics –Sounds-Write
To learn to read, we understand children need effective early phonics teaching from the start. Nursery’s language rich curriculum, together with activities to develop children’s phonological awareness, lays the foundations for children entering Reception where we teach our children to read using the ‘Sounds-Write’ phonics programme. Sounds-Write is a highly structured and multi-sensory programme which ensures children in Reception and Key Stage One develop the skills, concepts and phonic knowledge needed to be successful readers.
The Sounds-Write programme ensures that children learn the four main concepts necessary to become proficient in early reading and spelling.
- Letters are symbols (spellings) that represent sounds.
- Sounds can be spelt using 1,2,3, or 4 letters e.g. dog street night dough
- The same sound can be spelled in different ways e.g. rain break gate stay
- The same spelling can represent different sounds e.g. head seat break
- Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding spelling
- Learn to read new words by saying the sounds in a word and putting them together (blending)
- Learn to spell new words by splitting a word up into its sounds (segmenting)
- Learn to change or move individual sounds in a word to make new words (phoneme manipulation)
- Read high frequency words on sight within sentences
- Read decodable books featuring the words they have learnt to blend
- Read words and decodable books with greater fluency and speed
- Write the letters/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds
- Write words and simple sentences featuring the words they have learnt to segment
How we teach Sounds-Write
Daily, discrete whole-class phonics sessions take place in Reception and Key Stage One. Our highly skilled teachers deliver Sounds-Write sessions with purpose, pace and enthusiasm. Thoughtful differentiation and ongoing monitoring, ensures that all children feel successful in their learning and make progress from their individual starting points.
Each session is made up of three Sounds-Write lessons to enable:
- Review of prior learning
- Teaching new learning
- Applying reading or writing in a connected text
- Sounds are taught in a specific order through the Sounds-Write Units
- Children are taught the ‘pure’ sounds i.e. ‘mmm’ and not ‘muh’ to enable blending
- Children in Reception are taught the Initial Code
- Key Stage One children are taught the Extended Code and Polysyllabic Words
Reading at Home
When children are ready to blend sounds to read simple words, they will take home a fully-decodable book containing words that match the sounds they have learnt. Sounds-Write linked activity packs are taken home by children in Reception and Year One, enabling them to practise reading and spelling through simple games.
In addition to their decodable phonic book, EYFS and Key Stage One children choose a reading for pleasure book to share with an adult at home from our central or class library. Teachers support and encourage children to select books that engage their interests and try different genre choices.
Assessment and Monitoring
Progress is assessed throughout our daily Sounds-Write lessons, alongside end of unit reading and spelling assessments and half termly Sounds-Write phonic assessments. Progress is closely monitored and targeted ‘keep up’ and ‘catch up’ interventions are swiftly implemented for children identified as at risk of falling behind.